I believe I’m just recently witnessing the results of an algorithm update by Google from back in November that I’ve seen referred to elsewhere as the ‘freshness update’.

I’ve been hitting the blog hard this past month, posting much more actively than I have at any time since I began this site in late 2009. Checking my Analytics yesterday, I noticed two new search queries in the top five list of keywords that have brought the most organic traffic to my site within the past 30 days. Both of these terms are related to articles I wrote within the past two weeks, and they are “ThinkOven.com” and the “Linkedin Sales Navigator“.

For the first of these keyword terms, my site ranks in the #2 position, second only to the actual ThinkOven website itself. For the second term, this blog ranks as the #3 result, behind two pages for popular message board Quora.com.

One factor may be that the terms themselves are pretty fresh – one based on a Domino’s ad campaign that was launched only a month ago, and the other on a LinkedIn feature which from what I can tell was also rolled out fairly recently.

In one sense, this seems to highlight the importance of being ‘early-in’ on coverage of emerging topics and trends. On the other hand, I would also expect (if we are to take the update at it’s word) that in two, four, six, twelve, etc … months from now, when my articles have lost their freshness so to speak, that other more recent content may get to outrank me for those terms. Time will tell.

And while the two terms mentioned above are adding their share of traffic, I would also stress that the overwhelming majority of traffic to my blog is still found in the long-tail.

What about you? Have you noticed any impact on your sites (good or bad) from Google’s freshness algorithm change?